Did you know a professional soccer player performs approximately 700 changes of direction (COD) per competitive match? COD ability for soccer and many sports is critical for success. So how do you improve COD ability in a sport specific, multi-planar way? Wearable resistance (WR) is one option, and it was interesting to note the effect of vest loading (5% body mass) on a 45 degree cutting COD task in a study by Xueliang et al. (2020).
They found that WR didn't significantly change the COD movement techniques (trivial kinematic changes), meanwhile there were small increases in relative propulsive and braking, forces and impulses. They concluded that these changes were important stimuli for training deceleration, turning, and re-acceleration, and WR offers coaches flexibility in designing COD training to overload players using soccer specific movement patterns.
I’m left wondering the longitudinal effects of this or heavier vest loading, or lighter limb loading on COD performance? Hopefully some answers in the not too distant future.
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